Separate forum/community for autistic adults ?

A lot of good points there from Technophobe.  I'd certainly be in favour of PMs - it's healthy for a forum community that not everything is spoken in public, just as in real life.

I have used a fair few forums over the years, mostly computer programming sites, and have been a volunteer moderator on a couple of them.  Fortunately, I had very little confrontation to deal with as a moderator, but when it does happen, I can assure people that it is not a comfortable position to find oneself in.  Outright "trolling" is actually not a major problem; community peer pressure usually deals adequately with that if a forum is healthy.  Rather it is issues where one can see both sides, but an immovable object has just met an irresistible force - i.e. entrenched but polar opposite opinions, honestly held in good faith by both parties.

Unfortunately, on this and other sites shared by autistic people and carers/parents we have a situation where such differences of opinions is likely to happen for a couple of specific reasons..

Firstly, some parents of young autistic children (particularly if they have extreme traits such as being non-verbal), and some autistic adults (particularly those that believe in a particularly absolute form of 'neurodiversity') are never going to see eye to eye about certain issues.  This is not only a problem here - this fault line seems to exist across the western world, and I have seen its manifestations on most other autism forums, including those that cater only to one cohort or the other.

I do understand why 'cure vs. diversity' is such an emotive and divisive issue, but I also believe that discussing such things should not come before helping with a person's immediate crisis if they are obviously in distress.

Personally, I have been a little shocked at how quickly some parents are "shot down" for expressing opinions, or using language, inconsistent with neurodiversity.  Our society's accepted wisdom about autism is shockingly innaccurate, and apart from those of us who are touched by it personally, there is little incentive for a anyone to ever learn the truth.  I believed most of the same misconceptions about autism myself until only few months before my diagnosis, as I'm sure many other late diagnosed adults did.  As the aphorism says - let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

IMHO, insisting that people be better informed about autism before using the forum is also missing the point of the site (another opinion I have seen expressed recently.)  This place exists so that people can get informed about autism - insisting on prior knowledge would set up a paradox where people can't get informed because they're not informed enough!

The second major 'flash point' that I see is that autistic people are unfortunately prone to rubbing non-autistic people up the wrong way, and vice versa.  After all, certain social differences are one of the hallmarks of autism.  Although the internet is a great way for many autistic people to communicate, we shouldn't delude ourselves that our social deficits magically disappear the moment we go on-line

So, a forum that is inclusive of  autistic people must find a way to deal with different ways of being social - and that is probably always going to mean relaxing some common social expectations that people on the spectrum might find challenging and would otherwise exclude them.

But I don't see how you can do that and still expect non-autistic people not to be offended occasionally by our often more literal and blunt way of expressing ourselves.  The level of public awareness of autism is sadly too poor for our behaviour not to seem at least a little surprising to people who have never experienced it before.  And I can't stress enough that, rightly or wrongly, the NAS is many people's first point of contact following a diagnosis - so it is very common to have little or no experience of dealing with autistic people in their 'natural habitat' when first coming here.

That's why I believe there needs to be at least a separate section on the forum where people are forewarned that "here be aspies", and there's some kind of indication to think twice before taking offence.  Conversely, it would be understood that in the 'parents and carers' section, moderation might be applied more strictly, in order to avoid compounding the distress of parents/carers discovering their loved one's autism for the first time.

Not that parents/carers should be unwelcome in the 'autistic adults' zone, or should be shunned by those of us on the spectrum.  We do have plenty of good advice about living on the spectrum that may benefit parents and their children - we lived through it, after all.  And maybe their autistic children would grow up to come here and give the old-timers some advice occasionally.  I've met autistic teenagers who are far more wise about being autistic than I am!

A lot of good points there from Technophobe.  I'd certainly be in favour of PMs - it's healthy for a forum community that not everything is spoken in public, just as in real life.

I have used a fair few forums over the years, mostly computer programming sites, and have been a volunteer moderator on a couple of them.  Fortunately, I had very little confrontation to deal with as a moderator, but when it does happen, I can assure people that it is not a comfortable position to find oneself in.  Outright "trolling" is actually not a major problem; community peer pressure usually deals adequately with that if a forum is healthy.  Rather it is issues where one can see both sides, but an immovable object has just met an irresistible force - i.e. entrenched but polar opposite opinions, honestly held in good faith by both parties.

Unfortunately, on this and other sites shared by autistic people and carers/parents we have a situation where such differences of opinions is likely to happen for a couple of specific reasons..

Firstly, some parents of young autistic children (particularly if they have extreme traits such as being non-verbal), and some autistic adults (particularly those that believe in a particularly absolute form of 'neurodiversity') are never going to see eye to eye about certain issues.  This is not only a problem here - this fault line seems to exist across the western world, and I have seen its manifestations on most other autism forums, including those that cater only to one cohort or the other.

I do understand why 'cure vs. diversity' is such an emotive and divisive issue, but I also believe that discussing such things should not come before helping with a person's immediate crisis if they are obviously in distress.

Personally, I have been a little shocked at how quickly some parents are "shot down" for expressing opinions, or using language, inconsistent with neurodiversity.  Our society's accepted wisdom about autism is shockingly innaccurate, and apart from those of us who are touched by it personally, there is little incentive for a anyone to ever learn the truth.  I believed most of the same misconceptions about autism myself until only few months before my diagnosis, as I'm sure many other late diagnosed adults did.  As the aphorism says - let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

IMHO, insisting that people be better informed about autism before using the forum is also missing the point of the site (another opinion I have seen expressed recently.)  This place exists so that people can get informed about autism - insisting on prior knowledge would set up a paradox where people can't get informed because they're not informed enough!

The second major 'flash point' that I see is that autistic people are unfortunately prone to rubbing non-autistic people up the wrong way, and vice versa.  After all, certain social differences are one of the hallmarks of autism.  Although the internet is a great way for many autistic people to communicate, we shouldn't delude ourselves that our social deficits magically disappear the moment we go on-line

So, a forum that is inclusive of  autistic people must find a way to deal with different ways of being social - and that is probably always going to mean relaxing some common social expectations that people on the spectrum might find challenging and would otherwise exclude them.

But I don't see how you can do that and still expect non-autistic people not to be offended occasionally by our often more literal and blunt way of expressing ourselves.  The level of public awareness of autism is sadly too poor for our behaviour not to seem at least a little surprising to people who have never experienced it before.  And I can't stress enough that, rightly or wrongly, the NAS is many people's first point of contact following a diagnosis - so it is very common to have little or no experience of dealing with autistic people in their 'natural habitat' when first coming here.

That's why I believe there needs to be at least a separate section on the forum where people are forewarned that "here be aspies", and there's some kind of indication to think twice before taking offence.  Conversely, it would be understood that in the 'parents and carers' section, moderation might be applied more strictly, in order to avoid compounding the distress of parents/carers discovering their loved one's autism for the first time.

Not that parents/carers should be unwelcome in the 'autistic adults' zone, or should be shunned by those of us on the spectrum.  We do have plenty of good advice about living on the spectrum that may benefit parents and their children - we lived through it, after all.  And maybe their autistic children would grow up to come here and give the old-timers some advice occasionally.  I've met autistic teenagers who are far more wise about being autistic than I am!